Is Clegg delivering?

There appeared to be little of actual substance in yesterday’s constitutional reform package announced by Cameron’s sidekick. The promise of a small three-party committee of MPs and peers to produce a draft bill on an elected second chamber and tweaking on constituency boundaries is hardly the kind of radical reform that Clegg’s Liberal antecedents would recognise.

As we now know, his commitment that a referendum on extra powers for the Welsh Assembly would be held early next year turned out to be “a slip of the tongue”; as was the implication that the Con-Dem coalition would be backing a yes campaign.

But it was the Lib Dem leader’s inability to provide either date or details on Alternative Voting, or even whether legislation required for the referendum will be included in a wider political reform bill, which signaled that his party’s claims of being a pivotal part of government might be slightly exaggerated after all.

Of course, that it only the jaundiced view of those who observed that far greater emphasis appears to be placed by the Deputy PM on the need for new measures to ensure that it will require a 55% majority (presumably of those voting rather than 357.5 MPs) before a fixed-term parliament can be dissolved.